1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to automation of law offices, and more particularly to automation of personal injury law practices.
2. Description of Related Art
For an attorney experienced in personal injury plaintiff's work, cases proceed in a fairly predictable process. The client usually retains the attorney on a contingency basis, so that the attorney only is paid if there is a recovery for the client's injuries. The client usually has injuries which are treated by various professionals, such as doctors, dentists, physical therapists and chiropractors. The client typically seeks compensation for the costs of these treatments. The client may have other costs for which he seeks compensation, such as for repair of auto damage. Finally, the client may seek compensation for other things, such as pain and suffering, lost consortium, lost wages, etc.
It is well-known that most personal injury cases are settled. Of all personal injury cases, only a small percentage advance to the filing of a complaint, and fewer still advance through final judgement. The plaintiff's attorney is motivated to settle because of the high cost for the attorney to pursue a lawsuit. The defense attorney is motivated to settle because of the risk of a huge damage award against his client in litigation. In fact, early settlement is the norm in personal injury cases. Profitability of a personal injury law office often depends on efficient movement of cases toward settlement.
In running a personal injury law practice, an attorney or trained staff-member must spend hours to complete the necessary forms and documents needed to prepare a personal injury case for settlement. At the outset, letters must be sent to the client and insurance companies, and as the case progresses, letters and documents must be exchanged with medical providers, opposing attorneys, and eventually the courts. The time spent preparing these documents can severely distract personal injury attorneys from more important matters such as researching and investigating their cases and building their practices.
In many jurisdictions, the courts have promulgated required forms for practice before them. In California, personal injury lawyers commonly use a type of document called a Judicial Council form. The Judicial Council forms are official forms promulgated by the California Judicial Council, a court agency.
Studies have shown that an experienced personal injury lawyer spends approximately 25 hours working up a case to the point of settlement. Assuming a billing rate of $100/hour, the cost to settle the average case is $2,500. The attorney fees generated in a settlement of an average case are $3,200.
By automating the case handling and document production processes, software can reduce the amount of time required to prepare a case for settlement. By reducing the amount of time required to work up the average case, the profit margin can increase substantially. Furthermore, the attorney has more time to spend investigating and preparing their cases and obtaining new clients.
There are a number of computer programs which a personal injury plaintiff's law office can use for case management. These case management systems include databases for various relevant information, and often can generate calendars of previously entered due dates. These case management systems also serve as contact managers, and frequently will handle billing and accounting as well.
One of the major impediments to efficient management of data in a personal injury plaintiff's law office is the complex nature of the data. For a given case, the law office may represent many clients, each with differing claims and injuries. There may be many defendants. Many third parties are also involved in the process: defendants' lawyers, doctors, witnesses, expert witnesses, police departments, auto body shops, insurance companies, attorneys for the insurance companies, etc. Because there is so much information, typical systems have been unable to provide for efficient data entry and management. These are critical precedent steps toward gaining the benefits from these types of programs.
Relational databases have been known for quite some time. A relational database consists of a collection of tables, each having a unique name. A row in a table represents a relationship among a set of values. Thus a table represents a collection of relationships.
A relational database normally is considered to have two primary components. First, a relational database has a database scheme, which is the logical design of how data is organized withing the database. The database scheme includes the names of the tables, the names of the fields (or columns) within each table, and the attributes of the fields (e.g., text, numeric, date, etc.). Second, a relational database has a database instance, which is the data in the database at a point in time.
Despite the benefits of relational databases, most case management systems for personal injury plaintiff's law offices use simpler, hierarchical databases. Even those which have utilized relational databases have done so in a limited fashion. Without a well-designed relational database, a case management system for personal injury plaintiff's law offices requires double-entry of data and the case management system can be unable to handle the complex nature of the case's data. Without the ability to easily enter data, without the ability to enter certain types of data, and without the ability to logically organize the data, such systems have provided very limited benefit and have therefore seen limited commercial success.